HAVE YOU HEARD THE HUM?

Is there a HUM? People are hearing a HUM. Videos and recordings confirm there's a HUM.

I never heard of "The HUM" until I read about it the other day,  but I can't stand noise -- but when I hear my neighbor's highfi -- the bass beat reverberating in my walls --I go nuts.




This is a photo of the HUM which The Week Magazine published a few weeks ago.

Some folks have described it as sounding like a heavy diesel engine idling in the distance. Others say  the sound starts low and becomes a high pitched buzz. This map shows that it's been reported from everywhere in the world -- from Vancouver in Canada to Europe, Asia,  Australia, and New Zealand.

Is this mysterious noise a provable scientific fact -- is it real, or a delusion?

Researching, I learned that throughout the 20th and now, in the 21st century, hundreds of thousands of people worldwide have reported hearing  it. It started drawing media attention in England when the Bristol Sunday Mirror asked, in 1977, “Have You Heard the Hum?” Letters came flooding in from places that were far from the hustle and bustle of cities, describing an idling diesel engine noise that was audible at night, mostly indoors.

A nurse in a small village in Scotland said, "A thick, low hum permeating the entire house is keeping me awake. My husband, who had tinnitus, doesn't hear it but people look at me like I was mad. It makes me sometimes dizzy and nauseous."

Doctors have said the noise could be as a result of tinnitus or Ménière’s disease, but nothing conclusive has been published in medical journals. Hearing protectors do not help. Patients have  reported that wearing ear plugs, the body vibrated. High quality microphones cannot record the sound, and more often than not, other people in the immediate vicinity can hear nothing.

Experts have said the sound could be industrial equipment, or high pressure gas lines, wireless communication devices, electrical power lines, electromagnetic radiation, the mating calls of fish reverberating off ship hulls and buildings.

In 2010, Time Magazine listed The Hum as the 7th most annoying sound in the world, while Livescience featured it in their :‘Top 10 Unexplained Phenomenon.”

I read this to my husband who said, "Good God, we already have enough unexplained things to worry about," so I showed him these two videos.

 2006: Taos, New Mexico. 


Spain, in 2013.


THE HUM is real. If you've heard it, tell others about it -- use social media to apread the word so that scientists will find out what's causing it and what we need to do about it.